She stood up. “Permission to— “
“Go on, Ber,” he said. “Just put it on Tweed’s tab, not the station’s.”
She squeezed him suddenly and pecked his cheek. She ran back out to a smattering of applause from the other detectives and the soon-to-be-incarcerated loitering around.
24
Southern Comfort
Less than twenty-four hours later, Amber along with a team from the NYPD knocked on the door of the apartment to where Morales. He’d found a buddy who had some kind of drug den apartment he could crash in and a snitch had led them here. A neighbor confirmed that he had been there once or twice, but hadn’t seen him lately. The landlord tried to let them in, but apparently all three locks had been changed.
A battering ram took the door down in three quick blows. The air was musty and smelled of moldy food. Dust motes floated in the air of the trashed apartment. If she hadn’t known she was here to find Morales, she might’ve thought it was the scene of a burglary.
When the assisting officers cleared the dumpy place, she was allowed to stay behind while the crime scene techs went over everything with a fine-tooth comb. They tagged and bagged just about everything in the apartment that wasn’t covered in mold. While they worked, Amber carefully looked through all the papers lying on the kitchen counter, in the trash, and stuffed under the mattress.
Marcario had been here for sure. Some of the envelopes were current papers and court documents. She was sifting through them, taking some of them for prints and DNA when one of the techs called her into the bedroom.
She stepped over the yellow, tented numbers the photographers were using to document all of the locations of the filth they were bagging for evidence.
“It’s clear he was here,” one of them said, pointing at a small chest of drawers. “There are some clothes there that have obviously been washed recently. But there’s not much. It’s possible he’s grabbed some things and taken off.”
“Just what I was afraid of,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. Her badge was back on her belt, but it didn’t feel right … not yet. “Any sign of a plane ticket, or a receipt, or anything to tell us where he’s gone?”
“Nothing recent,” the man said, but there is this. He held up a posterboard with some items shrink-wrapped to the surface. Some of the stuff had been cut out. At the top, in black sharpie, the words: PROPERTY: Morales, Marcario. “It looks like it’s just a few old bus tickets, a couple of receipts, and a matchbook.”
He was about to toss them aside when she yelped. “That’s his stuff he picked up from prison. Let me see that!”
He held up his hands in surrender and passed the board over to her. She put on a new pair of gloves and pulled the plastic back. She flipped through the papers and smiled when she turned one over. She laid it on a nearby table and took a picture of it with her phone.
“Find something?” The tech asked, watching her.
“Maybe,” she said. She handed the papers and the posterboard to the man and walked out of the apartment. She visited Tito Cruz, had him sign an affidavit with his sworn statement on it and headed to the airport.
It was a victory, but without Marcario Morales in custody, it was a hollow one. She scrolled through her phone and found the photograph she had taken in his apartment. She knew where he was headed.
The man with the heavy stubble stared across his drink, eyes lowered, sunglasses on, despite the being inside a dark bar. Outside, he was the picture of calm serenity. A drinker who wanted nothing to do with the other barflies or tourists. He wanted nothing but a cold beer and anonymity. The last few weeks had been a whirlwind of events changing his life forever. He had been incarcerated for murder, when out of the blue, a woman walked in and set him free. The plan that he’d hatched sitting in the holding cell all those years ago had finally … God, finally … worked. And then, just a few days ago, the cops had stopped him on the mind-numbingly long trip south.
He’d always liked Florida, and once the handcuffs were off, he figured he’d take up residence there. Maybe someplace small. There were plenty of towns in the lower half of the peninsula that didn’t really care who you were or, more importantly, what you’d done in your previous life. Hell, they said everyone who lived in the Keys was running away from something. If he got lucky, maybe he could get some work on a boat, or a golf course, or a landscaping crew. But after the police stop in Macon, after he’d overheard that one skinny cop on his radio talking about taking him in, he decided he might need to go even further south … someplace where he could disappear forever. He hated that those two men had to die—at least he thought he’d killed them. He didn’t wait to see if they were still breathing when he shot them.
He knew his luck couldn’t hold out long. Somehow, he knew that bitch who had got him off would discover the truth. He wasn’t worried though. It would take a while for them to find him here and by that time, he might be a ghost in Havana.
On the TV, an announcer said that the Miami Dolphins had done well in the draft and were a dark horse contender for the Superbowl. A murmur of approval went up around the bar and some kid who looked like he might have been all of twelve ordered a round of drinks. He and his fraternity brothers had surely come to the wrong place. But then again, it’d been a long … long time.
He used to like this place, back before his stint at Sullivan. Low
